


Breathe and stop

by Shulik



Category: Hanna (2011), surprise crossover - Fandom
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-21
Updated: 2014-12-21
Packaged: 2018-03-02 17:18:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2820068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shulik/pseuds/Shulik
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Anybody can become angry - that is easy, but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way - that is not within everybody's power and is not easy. - Aristotle</p>
            </blockquote>





	Breathe and stop

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TheWrongKindOfPC](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheWrongKindOfPC/gifts).



Hanna is sixteen and she has killed Marissa Wiegler. 

Hanna’s father is dead. Sophie and her parents, the last time Hanna had seen them were about to be captured by Marissa’s hired thugs. There is a bullet hole in Hanna’s abdomen, three inches to the right of her kidney- she thinks blankly, blinking too slow in the morning light of the Grimm woods, and that bullet hole must take priority. She is losing blood at the rate of-… 

Hanna stumbles, almost drops the gun.

The bullet hole must be the first priority. 

She pockets the gun, flicks on the safety like Erik, no, her _father_ had taught her and steps closer to Marissa’s body.

The dead have no fears and desires but Hanna still thinks she can see Marissa’s eyes, full of hate and fear and something like a twisted sense of pride, but of course that’s not true. Marissa is dead and it is only chance that she’s died with her eyes open.

Hanna lowers herself, keeping one arm around her torso, clutching at her wound while her fingers hold steady and slick around the gun in her pocket. She uses her other hand to dig through Marissa’s pockets. 

Her father is dead and Hanna is alone, by the time she finds a way to get to money- she might bleed out. 

The dead want for nothing, but Hanna bites her lip to stop her hand from shaking as she opens Marissa’s slim, leather wallet. Two credit cards and one ID, Marissa’s cold eyes staring straight out of the picture at Hanna, the letters ‘Central Intelligence Agency’ emblazoned at the top and three thousand dollars in crisp one hundred dollar bills. 

She takes out all of the cards.

Hanna folds the money into the back pocket of her jeans and stands back up again. She folds the edge of her sleeve around the wallet and holds it gingerly. 

It is her imagination, but she thinks that Marissa looks prouder than before. Her paleness in life has translated to a stark contrast of her features and flame red hair in death. 

Hanna starts walking away, back towards the edge of the woods, away from the main road. She dumps Marissa’s wallet into the trash bin.

She throws the credit cards away one by one, trashbins separated by a distance of fifteen kilometers. She throws the ID down a sewer grate as she walks into a train station. 

 

+

\---------------------------------- CLASSIFIED. FOR INTERNAL EYES ONLY---------------------------------

Project “Galinka” while an admirable endeavour, cannot be counted as a success due to high likelihood of a mortal outcome within foetal subjects and gestational carriers.

Both pre and post-natal abnormalities are high and the rate of success falls far below the agency sanctioned protocols for prolonging research.

Gestational carriers have recorded exacerbated pregnancy symptoms. What pains, nausea and aches would have been normal in a regular pregnancy have been amplified by a factor of twenty within the test subjects. 

Forty percent of the gestational carriers have experienced sudden pregnancy-disruptions within the first trimester. This is most often exhibited within the carriers aged thirty years of age and above.

Twenty percent of the embrios are strong enough to withstand the second round of injections, the rate of pregnancy abruptions within this test group ranges from second trimester to as far along as third trimester miscarriages. Carriers aged twenty two to thirty are most likely to last until the second stage of the injection process.

The final group within the testing range are carriers aged twenty one and below. Within this subgroup, the foetal subjects were strong enough to survive through the complete round of injections, radiation and subsequent testing. The gestational carriers who survived the initial round of procedures are-

\--Redacted---

+

Hanna is seventeen and she has found Sophie. 

The Brighton air smells like nothing else that Hanna had experienced growing up, but she has started becoming used to the pollution of the bigger cities since Germany.

She knows that originally, Sophie was born in North Yorkshire and moved to West Yorkshire when Rachel finally consented to marry Sebastian. They stayed in England for four more years before Rachel’s wandering spirit started searching for something more and Sebastian loved his new wife enough to try and give her the world that she was so desperate to see.

Miles was born in Armenia and Sebastian is still not sure whether he is truly the biological father of his two children.

Sophie is standing under the school’s awning, face animated as she talks to the two girls in front of her. Her hair is in a high ponytail and she is wearing large, square earrings made out of a shiny metal that Hanna thinks is likely diamante or something else, cheaply made and widely available.

Sophie’s wearing a bright pink windbreaker and sneakers the colour of her jacket. She looks good, happy, healthy.

Hanna misses her like an aching thing has settled within her chest.

 

+

 

It took one week to track down Sophie’s family and ten months to find the courage to talk to Sophie. 

+

Hanna had dumped everything she thought could be used to easier identify Marissa’s body before walking into the first train station she could find. Train stations, with their multitude of exits and large, open areas filled with thousands of tourists bustling back and forth were the perfect opportunity to hide.

Hanna had pulled her sweater’s hood over her hair before walking into chemist’s shop. A soft looking Indian woman, white coat over a brightly coloured sari at the counter- she gave Hanna a brief glance as the doorbell jingled at her entrance.

“Would you like assistance?” 

Hanna shook her head before proceeding down the aisle, keeping her head down as she gathered everything she needed.

Two rolls of gauze, one small bottle of peroxide and a thin pair of surgical scissors that Hanna slipped into her pocket with a slight flick of the wrist.

The chemist raised her eyebrows at Hanna’s purchase when she walked up to pay.

“Are you alright?” her voice was kind, accent lilting. Hanna could have broken her neck with one hand before the chemist would be able to scream.

Hanna smiled. Adults tended to like her more when she smiled at them. Erik had said that Hanna looked impish when she smiled. Like a child. 

Adults tended to trust her more when her smile hid the look in her eyes.

The chemist’s shoulders relaxed imperceptibly. 

“My brother’s cut himself,” Hanna found herself saying, Miles’s face unbidden in her mind, “and he’s made such a big fuss over the whole thing,” she shrugged, “my mother’s sent me to buy supplies.”

The chemist laughed and began ringing Hanna up.

“Men, huh? I have had more male customers complain about scratches than I have had post-surgical…” and the chemist was shaking her head, launching into a story as Hanna nodded politely. 

 

+++

 

The bullet looked squashed as it slid out of her. Such a small thing, capable of such destruction. 

Hanna met her reflection’s eyes in the grey light of the Stuttgart train station bathroom. Her hair fell in thick, matted waves around her shoulders and the grey sweatshirt that Sophie had given her was starting to seep through with blood. She took it off, leaving her clad only in the thin black shirt that she had stolen in Marrakech.

Her skin was sweaty, droplets beading on her forehead. 

Hanna licked her lips, breathed out and carefully placed the bullet beside the faucet. She carefully made a pad out of the gauze before soaking it in the peroxide and applying it to the newly reopened wound.

“Stuttgart,” her voice was a whisper, hoarse as if freedom was too much for her to bear, “is the sixth largest city in Germany. Population is five hundred, eighty seven thousand.”

The bathroom door opened and Hanna’s arm was raised, gun at the ready before she let her next breath out.

“Oh god,” a young woman of Asian descent, long black hair, expensive looking clothes- “I’m so sorry. I didn’t, I, I can just go. Please,” her voice broke, “please don’t kill me. I’m just visiting.” She huddled against the door, both her arms out, palms open. She looked terrified. 

Terror, Hanna thought vaguely, is a fear response and project Galinka was designed to eliminate the fear response within its subjects.

Hanna cocked her head. “Take off your coat.”

 

+

 

Hanna is eighteen and the money that Erik had left is tied up by the CIA.

The man in front of her is rotund. Five feet four inches, two hundred pounds and the sweat on him smells like fear.

The gun in Hanna’s hand might have something to do with his reaction.

“Try again,” Hanna gestures. 

“I’m sorry madame,” the man’s French is tinged with a hint of a Flemish accent.

He is of Belgian descent, probably by way of Morocco, “there is nothing. I can see the Americans’ filthy hands on everything… tfu,” he spits, “mais there is nothing I can do for you.”

He is the best at what he does within the French quarter,

“That isn’t possible,” Erik had once called her too hotheaded, Hanna remembers sparring with him in the woods, that foreign feeling of rage, white hot and blinding coursing through her veins as she had tried to prove to her father that she was ready, “check it again.”

“Je suis desole,” the man says, his eyes darting back and forth between his computer and Hanna’s outstretched hand with the Glock pointed at his head. “But I have tried everything I can. Anything more will draw undue attention to us, and c’est ne pas something we’d like- non?”

Hanna’s anger crystalizes into a blinding thing, sharp and cold. She feels herself calm and lowers the hand with the gun.

“Then I want to inquire about employment opportunities that you might have for me,” she says.

The man’s eyes widen, “madame, I am only a consultant. I have no power to hire-“

“Don’t lie,” Hanna says quietly, “your cousin, Henri Duchenne- he is currently a mercenary within the French Foreign Legion. Thirty three years old, he has a reputation within…” pause, “more unsavoury circles that I’m sure you are aware of. I would like to inquire about employment with him.”

+

“Hanna,” Erik’s eyes had been a dark brown, her mother’s eyes were a light ice blue. 

Hanna had never questioned why she had ended up looking entirely like a copy of Johanna Zadek, nothing of her father in her features, until the moment she had laid under that bed- Marissa’s mocking accent laughing as she brought Hanna’s world down. “Hanna, above all else- you must survive. You cannot afford to have distractions and illusions Hanna, the world is large and cold and it would chew you up and spit you out.”

Hanna had sat across from him, clad in the fur of the elk that she had taken down with a single shot to the eye. 

“But where will you be?” she wondered out loud. Her world had always been her and her father, it seemed impossible that he would let her face the coldness he was describing alone.

Erik glanced down.

Later, after his death, when Hanna would lay awake at night and go over everything her father had ever taught her- she would recognize this gesture as a peculiar tell of his. He was lying to her even then.

“I’ll be with you,” Erik had said and his voice sounded hoarse, he looked back up at her and smiled. It looked peculiar beneath his beard, his face covered entirely in coarse brown hair, streaked with silver streaks of grey. “I’ll always be with you, my Hanna.”

 

+

 

Hanna is nineteen and she has been a mercenary for eleven months. 

The money is good and the work is easy. She feels no qualms about her work, she knows that her superiors would never point her in the direction of women and children and Hanna has no reservations about doing what needs to be done to those who deserve it. 

Mostly, she doesn’t kill- she is a part of a unit that goes into the countries that the world has given up on, countries so far off the map that Hanna learns about them only as her boots touch down on the soil. 

The men in her unit, a hostile, uncomprehending entity at first have taken to being overprotective, hostile to anyone but her whenever Hanna is involved and she feels a little bit like she is home for the first time in three years.

Big men with coarse facial hair and elaborate tattoos, they tamp down on the vulgar jokes and try to drink less when Hanna is sent on missions with them. 

She knows that her looks have always played this trick on men. They look at Hanna’s white blonde hair and ice-grey eyes, the way her face freckles in the summer and think of their granddaughters, their sisters, the first girls they ever loved before the world wanted them to pick up a gun. 

The first time she had taken a gun to a man’s head had been in Mozambique, deep within the jungle while a dictator’s army was getting dispatched around her. 

The man’s second in command had been a Westerner, a German by the name of Hans Christin and he had personally given the order to execute three villagers’ worth of innocents. 

Her boot pressed on his trachea, the man’s gurgling breaths especially loud in the corpse littered main room and Hanna had never felt more like she was doing the right thing.

In one of the villages, she had seen the bodies of a mother and child, the mother curled tightly around her son’s small frame, their home burned to ashes around them.

“Where is Valjean?” Hanna repeated her question and pressed harder, even as Christin’s eyes narrowed in mocking condescension.

His arm made an aborted movement to the barrel of the gun that Hanna had thrown to the side. 

Lightning fast, Hanna moved her boot of his neck and stomped down on his fingers, the crunch echoing loudly as he screamed.

“I repeat, give us Valjean and we’ll leave you be-“ there was a trickle of sweat down her back, down her olive green cargo pants and she could feel her hair sticking to her skin.

“We both know that’s not true Hanna,” Christin wheezed laughing. 

Hanna’s heart skipped a beat.

“What did you say?” she brought out the second gun and automatically took a step back.

“Hanna Heller,” Christin was outright laughing now, “born to Johanna Zadek and an unidentified father.” He began to cough, “bitch probably had no idea who he was anyway. Erik Heller recruited Johanna to the Galinka project before her eighteenth birthday and there you were, strong enough to survive all of the injections, cute enough for Heller to develop a conscience.”

The space beneath her chest, the area between her ribs felt empty, hollow. Hanna could feel herself standing back in her dead grandmother’s apartment, her father’s face achingly familiar and terrifyingly strange in front of her.

“How do you know all this?” Hanna stepped forward again.

Christin narrowed his eyes, pursed his lips.

Outside, Hanna could hear shouting, gunshots and then the dull boom of a grenade being launched.

Christin lay silent until Hanna shot at his other hand. He screamed.

“I can make this quick, or I can make this slow-“ Hanna licked her lips, “the choice is yours.”

Christin’s eyes glittered malevolently, “Interpol was initially partnered with the CIA, before the Galinka project came about. We were working on a joint research program, Blackbriar, but once the Americans started experimenting with pregnant women and foetuses- my superiors got,” he coughed again, turned his head and began spitting up blood. 

Hanna waited until Christin turned his head forward once more, watching her intently.

“Your superiors?” Hanna prompted him. Outside, she could hear the sounds of her unit looking for her.

“Once my superiors realized what the next step of the DNA modification program was, we pulled out of Blackbriar and left the operation to the Americans-“ Christin smiled, his teeth were stained with blood- “they had less qualms about experimenting with the unborn.”

“Hanna!” Givers, twenty two years old and with a decidedly romantic attachment to Hanna burst through the door, “Hanna, what the hell is going on here?”

“You going to tell him, or should I?” Christin turned his head and a shot rang out. 

Givers’ eyes were wide and shocked. He looked at Hanna in disbelief as she lowered her hand.

“He wasn’t going to give us more information,” she shrugged, “we’ll have to find Valjean on our own.”

Givers’ stepped forward, ignoring the rapidly growing pool of blood beneath Hanna’s feet. 

“We found him,” he swallowed, “I was just going to tell you that Henri found him.”

+

Sophie’s hands were shaking as she wrapped her long fingers around the mug of coffee. Hanna watched her.

“Are you,” Sophie swallowed, a thin sheen covering her forehead, “are you alright? Did those people hurt you?”

Hanna shook her head, “No. I’m alright.” 

Sophie nodded, a small, jerking motion that made her look like a paper doll, skin stretched thin over brittle bones. “Good,” she bit her lower lip, “that’s good.”

“Are you afraid of me?” Hanna couldn’t breathe properly, like all the air in the café had been suddenly sucked out and the other patrons had vanished into thin air. This was her first friend, the first person that Hanna had seen rising out of the desert like a mirage. 

“Hanna, I-“ Sophie looked right at her then, “I saw you slice that man’s neck open.” Her pupils were dilated, the bright blue of her eyes seemed like a thin ring around the black irises. “I’m sorry.”

The air rushed rapidly back into Hanna’s lungs and she could see, for the first time that this was a girl with middle class parents, and a younger brother, who had never seen an animal hurt much less a human and had never and would never take a life with her hands. Hanna felt suddenly, overwhelmingly fond of Sophie, protective, like Sophie was something to be treasured and protected and Hanna knew that without a doubt, if she continued to stay in her life- Sophie’s innocence, the thing that had drawn them together in the first place would be extinguished. Most probably by Hanna’s own hands. She would never mean to, oh no, but she would nonetheless be the reason for Sophie’s downfall and Hanna achingly, thoroughly and completely loved her too much for that.

Sophie was her first friend, the first person to look at Hanna without fear or a plan and Hanna would forever love her for that.

“Be safe,” Hanna said and stood up, depositing a five pound note on the table, “be happy.” 

There were tears at the corners of Sophie’s eyes as Hanna walked away from the table, but she didn’t call her back.

+

The internet is a marvellous thing. Hanna thinks that if anything, the internet is her most favourite technological invention.

She opens up a search browser, before pausing and listening outside.

The rest of the men are asleep, the house is silent and once more, Hanna is filled with a sense of purpose. Like the knowledge, bone deep and pure- that she had to kill Marissa, this is something Hanna knows will take her away from this security. This absurd kind of home she had made with a team of trained killers and thieves. 

This is what Hanna has been searching for since Erik fell on that playground in Berlin and Marissa looked at her with a bone-deep kind of exhaustion, waiting to die on abandoned rail tracks.

Purpose. 

She exhales and begins typing –B-L-A-C-K-B-R-I-A-R. 

The first result is the name ‘Jason Bourne’ and a picture of a man, Caucasian, early thirties with the kind of carefully cultivated blandness that Hanna knows to be a product of government work. 

She clicks on the picture and begins to read. There is a gun in her hand and four hundred thousand dollars saved away in multiple accounts overseas. 

She has time.


End file.
